hey include all
the social functions, and as regards their efficiency in facilitating
these functions. We must not make the mistake of judging a government
merely by its form. Under the same constitution and holding the same
ideals, there is room for widely different forms of activity on the
part of the government, and great differences in efficiency and in the
functions performed. The same functions may be performed and the same
degree of efficiency reached apparently with different organizations.
Cleveland shows, for example, how our own government might become much
more efficient and make radical changes in the mechanism of the
legislative and executive functions without sacrificing any principle
we hold to, and perhaps without any change in our constitution.

It is this idea of the proper functions of government and the relative
adequacy of existing governments to perform them that seems to be
deeply questioned. Life has suddenly grown more complex. The
individual is brought face to face with new demands upon him. He
becomes, it may be, a member of new groups, having new functions.
Government also, and correspondingly, expands. The question is not now
of the efficiency of government in doing what it has hitherto
undertaken; we wish to feel sure that government is adequate to meet
the requirements of a rapidly changing social order. That just now is
indeed a very vital question. Governments, we say, may be obliged to
adapt themselves to entirely new tasks. Society assumes new external
relations, and therefore we should expect that new organs would be
needed for performing these new functions.

In all this we have been making _objective_ valuations of government.
An ideal or a definition of government in terms of its functions and
the degree of efficiency in the performance of them might still, we
ought to observe, leave a wide scope for preference in regard to
forms, and other subjective valuations. Even between aristocratic and
democratic forms, there may be still room for valid appreciations on
aesthetic or moral grounds. Our objective valuations of government must
in fact in various ways impinge upon fundamental questions in which no
purely scientific considerations will be wholly decisive.

We can certainly find no precise way of valuing in detail or in their
totality existing or proposed forms of government. Our most valid
method, however, appears to be to refer at every step the functions of
government back